Enjoying the Variety of What Life Has to Offer

May 1, 2017

Let’s look at the carrot – the beautiful reward that comes from abating binging – putting it to the side like something that we don’t need anymore, just now, just while we go on living our lives for a while.

“Hope springs eternal” is a saying I read this morning, and it reminded me that there is nothing like spring to show us that life is about variety. Felix Lopez, whom I interviewed here, reminded us that no two flowers are the same. “I don’t believe that God likes repetition,” he says.

When we are binging – or obsessing over any one thing, for that matter – we miss out on the smorgasbord of beauty and experience that creation has laid before us.

The gift of stopping the obsession, however we get there, be it Bright Line Eating, another eating plan, or a spontaneous recovery, is that we get to experience life in all its splendor.

When I stopped binging, I realized that I loved and thoroughly enjoyed my drives to and from the classes I regularly teach. In hugging the curves of the road in my mountain town, I found bliss that was more than enough – it filled me up, and there was no gap, no more void that needed to be filled. Likewise, the sight or smell of a beautifully arranged bouquet of flowers could send me on a high of intense gratitude. A high that, unlike the high of trying to escape, is permeated with wisdom and the savoring of life itself.

Imagine: no void to fill, no emptiness inside.

Remember that we are all on the spectrum of healing. There is no shame in being where you are at, and in fact, by looking at your relationship with food with willingness to one day transform it, you are doing (as Kathe Izzo says) graduate level work that many are not yet ready for.

On the other side of obsession lies succulent life. Magnificent life. It’s what you are really longing for, I have a feeling – a life fully lived. That is your birthright; may you feel utterly empowered in not letting anything or anyone take that away from you.